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Former B.C. solicitor general John van Dongen says the constitutional flaws in what was billed as Canada’s “toughest” drunk-driving regime were obvious and ignored for political gain.

In a frank interview about the controversial law, van Dongen said he believes the administrative penalties unveiled three years ago by then-solicitor general Mike de Jong were far too severe and that the law stripped people of civil rights.

He said the measures were motivated by Liberal hopes of capitalizing on sympathy for the victims of impaired drivers rather than proper public policy and legal standards.

The B.C. Supreme Court in Nov. 2011 found the law unconstitutional primarily because it did not have a proper appeal process, and the government has responded by re-writing it.

“I warned (current Justice Minister Shirley) Bond, (Supt. Of Motor Vehicles) Steve Martin and other staff that courts would never support this legislation, which was right over the top,” van Dongen said.

“It went too far in terms of balancing ease of enforcement versus individual rights under the law ….de Jong as a lawyer should have known better.”

Still, the veteran, now-independent MLA for Abbotsford South conceded that he voted for the bill for the same political reasons the Liberals proposed it.

“The problem is if I’m arguing against going after drinking driving, I’m going to get killed (politically),” van Dongen said.

“But we knew, we knew … people like me knew, I couldn’t believe they were going through with this. They destroyed lives with this bloody thing …. You don’t get to hammer the hell out of somebody when you suspend their individual rights.”

After learning of two specific cases of injustice, one in which a man lost his job as a truck driver, van Dongen said he raised the spectre of families being ripped apart by questionable roadside suspensions at a meeting with Martin, but the superintendent of motor vehicles was unsympathetic.

Van Dongen called him “a zealot.”

A $1,000 fine would work, van Dongen said, rather than penalties and costs that amount to thousands of dollars and are “beyond what would happen in some criminal cases.

“We don’t have to and we shouldn’t want to hit a guy with $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 worth of costs, basically brutalize the guy, have him lose his job,” van Dongen said.

“And I’m not sure we should be entitled to do that under an administrative system where the guy isn’t entitled to go to court.”

His distaste for the program, van Dongen insisted, was one of the reasons he left the Liberals on March 26, 2012 to sit as a Conservative. He resigned from that party on Sept. 22 to sit as an independent.

“I was so totally beside myself on this one,” van Dongen said.

“This was nuts …. They shouldn’t have a right to do this stuff ... They take politics to such an extreme that they will build public policy around politics and that is in part, and I stress in part, what I believe happened here.”

Van Dongen insisted he agreed in theory with the new approach.

“I have been arguing for administrative penalties across the board in government since I became an MLA,” he said. “I believe in them.”

Although discussion about using administrative penalties as a tool to fight drunk driving began while van Dongen was responsible for the Motor Vehicles branch in 2009, he said de Jong was in charge when the details of the scheme were approved.

On April 27, 2010, de Jong unveiled what he called the “most immediate and severe impaired driving penalties” under major amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act that allowed police to issue immediate roadside suspensions.

The officer became investigator, prosecutor and judge.

De Jong said the stiff measures were in memory of Alexa Middelaer, the photogenic four-year-old struck and killed by a drunk driver in Delta who was the focus of outrage.

Her parents and Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada supported him.

Van Dongen said that he not only sent emails about his concerns to Bond, who became Public Safety and Solicitor General March 14, 2011, he also gave a presentation to the Liberal caucus last February (a month before he quit).

Van Dongen resigned as Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General in April 2009 after the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles suspended his driver’s licence for four months for speeding.

Since the drunk-driving law went into effect, more than 35,000 motorists have received roadside suspensions. But the government last week announced 1,137 who received their prohibitions immediately before the Nov. 2011 court ruling would be exempt from about $2,700 worth of penalties.

It now faces litigation from other drivers.

“I don’t know how much this is going to cost the government but it is going to be a lot,” van Dongen predicted.

“They destroyed a lot of lives. Now they probably stopped some drinking and driving as well, but there is a law: There is a law even for government. This was that we-can-do-anything-we-want syndrome.”

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